
FT MEADE 
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MOUFFLOU 
AND OTHER 
STORIES 












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MOUFFLOU 


THE CHILDREN’S CLASSICS 


BY MISS MULOCK 
THE LITTLE LAME PRINCE 

SELECTED 

TALES OF WASHINGTON IRVING’S 
ALHAMBRA 

BY EMMA GELLIBRAND 

J. COLE 

BY JOHANNA SPYRI 

MONI THE GOAT BOY 
BY OUIDA 

MOUFFLOU AND OTHER STORIES 
THE NURNBERG STOVE 
A DOG OF FLANDERS 


SELECTED 

WONDERLAND STORIES 


BY GEORGE MACDONALD 

THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN 
THE PRINCESS AND CURDIE 
AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND 


Each beautifully illustrated in color 
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THEY PLAY WITH MOUFFLOU AND THE POODLE PUPPY HALF THE DAY 










MOUFFLOU 

AND OTHER STORIES 


LOUISA DE LA RAMEX- 

(OUIDA) 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR BY 

MARIA L. KIRK 

AND PEN DRAWINGS BY 

EDMUND H. GARRETT 



PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 




COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 


PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, I9I7 



PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS 
PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A. 


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CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Moufflou. 9 

Lampblack. 51 

The Ambitious Rose-tree. 65 











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ILLUSTRATIONS 

IN COLOR 

PAGE 

Tdey Plat with Moufflou and the Poodle Puppy Half the Day 

Frontispiece ^ 

“Old Deposit is Going to be a Sign-post,” They Cried. 57 ^ 

One Day the Gardener Approached and Stood and Looked at Her 70 I'" 

PEN DRAWINGS 

Moufflou Acquitted Himself Ably as Ever . il 

“Then the Master Knew Best,” Thought Lampblack. 03 

“Pretty Poll! Oh, Such a Pretty Poll!”. 84 1/ 








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MOUFFLOU 



MOUFFLOU 


M OUFFLOU’S masters were some boys 
and girls. They were very poor, but 
they were very merry. They lived in 
an old, dark, tumble-down place, and their father 
had been dead five years; their mother ^s care was 
all they knew; and Tasso was the eldest of them 
all, a lad of nearly twenty, and he was so kind, 
so good, so laborious, so cheerful, and so gentle, 
that the children all younger than he adored him. 
Tasso was a gardener. Tasso, however, though 
the eldest and mainly the bread-winner, was not 
so much Moufflou’s master as was little Eomolo, 
who was only ten, and a cripple. Eomolo, called 
generally Lolo, had taught Moufflou all he knew, 
and that all was a very great deal, for nothing 
cleverer than was Moufflou had ever walked upon 
four legs. 

Why Moufflou? 

Well, when the poodle had been given to them 
by a soldier who was going back to his home in 
Piedmont, he had been a white woolly creature 
of a year old, and the children’s mother, who was 
a Corsican by birth, had said that he was just 


12 


MOUFFLOU 


like a moufflon, as they call sheep in Corsica. 
White and woolly this dog remained, and he be¬ 
came the handsomest and biggest poodle in all 
the city, and the corruption of Moufflon from 
Moufflon remained the name by which he was 
known; it was silly, perhaps, but it suited him 
and the children, and Moufflon he was. 

They lived in an old quarter of Florence, in 
that picturesque zigzag which goes round the 
grand church of Or San Michele, and which is 
almost more Venetian than Tuscan in its min¬ 
gling of color, charm, stateliness, popular con¬ 
fusion, and architectural majesty. The tall old 
houses are weather-beaten into the most delicious 
hues; the pavement is enchantingly encumbered 
with peddlers and stalls and all kinds of trades 
going on in the open air, in that bright, merry, 
beautiful Italian custom which, alas, alas! is being 
driven away by new-fangled laws which deem it 
better for the people to be stuffed up in close, 
stewing rooms without air, and would fain do 
away with all the good-tempered politics and 
the sensible philosophies and the wholesome chat¬ 
ter which the open-street trades and street gos¬ 
sipry encourage, for it is good for the populace 
to sfogare and in no other way can it do so one- 
half so innocently. Drive it back into musty 


MOUFFLOU 


13 


shops, and it is driven at once to mutter sedition. 
. . . But you want to hear about Moufflou. 

Well, Moufflou lived here in that high house 
with the sign of the lamb in wrought iron, which 
shows it was once a warehouse of the old guild 
of the Arte della Lana. They are all old houses 
here, drawn round about that grand church 
which I called once, and will call again, like a 
mighty casket of oxidized silver. A mighty 
casket indeed, holding the Holy Spirit within 
it; and with the vermilion and the blue and the 
orange glowing in its niches and its lunettes like 
enamels, and its statues of the apostles strong 
and noble, like the times in which they were 
created,—^St. Peter with his keys, and St. Mark 
with his open book, and St. George leaning on 
his sword, and others also, solemn and austere as 
they, austere though benign, for do they not guard 
the White Tabernacle of Orcagna within ? 

The church stands firm as a rock, square as a 
fortress of stone, and the winds and the waters of 
the skies may beat about it as they will, they have 
no power to disturb its sublime repose. Some¬ 
times I think of all the noble things in all our 
Italy; Or San Michele is the noblest, standing 
there in its stern magnificence, amidst people’s 
hurrying feet and noisy laughter, a memory of 
God. 


14 


MOUFFLOU 


The little masters of Moufflon lived right in 
its shadow, where the bridge of stone spans the 
space between the houses and the church high 
in mid-air: and little Lolo loved the church with 
a great love. He loved it in the morning-time, 
when the sunbeams turned it into dusky gold 
and jasper; he loved it in the evening-time, when 
the lights of its altars glimmered in the dark, and 
the scent of its incense came out in the street; 
he loved it in the great feasts, when the huge 
clusters of lilies were borne inside it; he loved it 
in the solemn nights of winter; the flickering 
gleam of the dull lamps shone on the robes of 
an apostle, or the sculpture of a shield, or the 
glow of a casement-moulding in majolica. He 
loved it always, and, without knowing why, he 
called it la mia cliiesa, 

Lolo, being lame and of delicate health, was 
not enabled to go to school or to work, though 
he wove the straw covering of wine-flasks and 
plaited the cane matting with busy fingers. But 
for the most part he did as he liked, and spent 
most of his time sitting on the parapet of Or 
San Michele, watching the venders of earthen¬ 
ware at their trucks, or trotting with his crutch 
(and he could trot a good many miles when he 
chose) out with Moufflou down a bit of the Stock- 


MOUFFLOU 


15 


ing-makers’ Street, along under the arcades of 
the Uffizi, and so over the Jewellers’ Bridge, 
and out by byways that he knew into the fields 
on the hill-side upon the other bank of Arno. 
Mouffiou and he would spend half the day—all 
the day—out there in daffodil-time; and Lolo 
would come home with great bundles and sheaves 
of golden flowers, and he and Moufflon were 
happy. 

His mother never liked to say a harsh word 
to Lolo, for he was lame through her fault: she 
had let him fall in his babyhood, and the mis¬ 
chief had been done to his hip never again to be 
undone. So she never raised her voice to him, 
though she did often to the others,—^to curly- 
pated Cecco, and pretty black-eyed Dina, and 
saucy Bice, and sturdy Beppo, and even to the 
good, manly, hard-working Tasso. Tasso was 
the mainstay of the whole, though he was but a 
gardener’s lad, working in the green Cascine at 
small wages. But all he earned he brought home 
to his mother; and he alone kept in order the 
lazy, high-tempered Sandro, and he alone kept 
in check Bice’s love of finery, and he alone could 
with shrewdness and care make both ends meet 
and put minestra always in the pot and bread 
always in the cupboard. 


16 


MOUFFLOU 


When his mother thought, as she thought 
indeed almost ceaselessly, that with a few months 
he would he of the age to draw his number, and 
might draw a high one and be taken from her 
for three years, the poor soul believed her very 
heart would burst and break; and many a day 
at twilight she would start out unperceived and 
creep into the great church and pour her soul 
forth in supplication before the White Taber¬ 
nacle. 

Yet, pray as she would, no miracle could hap¬ 
pen to make Tasso free of military service; if 
he drew a fatal number, go he must, even though 
he take all the lives of them to their ruin with 
him. 

One morning Lolo sat as usual on the parapet 
of the church, Moufflou beside him. It was a 
brilliant morning in September. The men at the 
hand-barrows and at the stalls were selling the 
crockery, the silk handkerchiefs, and the straw 
hats which form the staple of the commerce 
that goes on round about Or San Michele,— 
very blithe, good-natured, gay commerce, for the 
most part, not got through, however, of course, 
without bawling and screaming, and shouting 
and gesticulating, as if the sale of a penny pipkin 
or a twopenny pie-pan were the occasion for the 


MOUFFLOU 


17 


exchange of many thousands of pounds sterling 
and cause for the whole world ^s commotion. It 
was about eleven o’clock; the poor petitioners 
were going in for alms to the house of the frater¬ 
nity of San Giovanni Battista; the barber at the 
corner was shaving a big man with a cloth tucked 
about his chin, and his chair set well out on the 
pavement; the sellers of the pipkins and pie- 
pans were screaming till they were hoarse, ^^TJn 
soldo Vuno, due soldi tre!^^ big bronze bells were 
booming till they seemed to clang right up to 
the deep-blue sky; some brethren of the Miseri- 
cordia went by bearing a black bier; a large sheaf 
of glowing flowers—dahlias, zinnias, asters, and 
daturas—^was borne through the huge arched 
door of the church near St. Mark and his open 
book. Lolo looked on at it all, and so did 
Moufflon, and a stranger looked at them as he 
left the church. 

‘‘You have a handsome poodle there, my little 
man, ’ ’ he said to Lolo, in a foreigner’s too distinct 
and careful Italian. 

‘ ‘ Moufflon is beautiful, ’ ’ said Lolo, with pride. 
“You should see him when he is just washed; 
but we can only wash him on Sundays, because 
then Tasso is at home.” 

“How old is your dog?” 


2 


18 


MOUFFLOU 


‘‘Three years old/’ 

“Does he do any tricks?” 

“Does he!” said Lolo, with a very derisive 
laugh: “Why, Moufflon can do anything! He can 
walk on two legs ever so long; make ready, pre¬ 
sent, and fire; die; waltz; beg, of course; shut a 
door; make a wheelbarrow of himself; there is 
nothing he will not do. Would you like to see 
him do something?” 

“Very much,” said the foreigner. 

To Moufflon and to Lolo the street was the 
same thing as home; this cheery piazsetta by the 
church, so utterly empty sometimes, and some¬ 
times so noisy and crowded, was but the wider 
threshold of their home to both the poodle and 
the child. 

So there, under the lofty and stately walls 
of the old church, Lolo put Moufflon through his 
exercises. They were second nature to Moufflon, 
as to most poodles. He had inherited his ad¬ 
dress at them from clever parents, and, as he 
had never been frightened or coerced, all his les¬ 
sons and acquirements were but play to him. 
He acquitted himself admirably and the crockery- 
venders came and looked on, and a sacristan 
came out of the church and smiled, and the barber 
left his customer’s chin all in a lather while he 


MOUFFLOU 


19 


laughed, for the good folk of the quarter were 
all proud of Moufflou and never tired of him, 
and the pleasant, easy-going, good-humored dis¬ 
position of the Tuscan populace is so far removed 
from the stupid buckram and whalebone in which 
the new-fangled democracy wants to imprison it. 

The stranger also was much diverted by Mouf¬ 
flou’s talents, and said, half aloud, ^‘How this 
clever dog would amuse poor Victor! Would 
you bring your poodle to please a sick child I 
have at home?” he said, quite aloud, to Lolo, who 
smiled and answered that he would. Where was 
the sick child? 

‘‘At the Gran Bretagna; not far off,” said the 
gentleman. “Come this afternoon, and ask for 
me by this name. ’ ’ 

He dropped his card and a couple of francs 
into Lolo’s hand, and went his way. Lolo, with 
Moufflou scampering after him, dashed into his 
own house, and stumped up the stairs, his crutch 
making a terrible noise on the stone. 

“Mother, mother! see what I have got be¬ 
cause Moufflou did his tricks, ’ ’ he shouted. ‘ ‘ And 
now you can buy those shoes you want so much, 
and the coffee that you miss so of a morning, and 
the new linen for Tasso, and the shirts for 
Sandro.” 


20 


MOUFFLOU 


For to the mind of Lolo two francs was as 
two millions—source unfathomable of riches 
inexhaustible! 

With the afternoon he and Moufflon trotted 
down the arcades of the Uffizi and down the Lung’ 
Arno to the hotel of the stranger, and, showing 
the stranger’s card, which Lolo could not read, 
they were shown at once into a great chamber, 
all gilding and fresco and velvet furniture. 

But Lolo, being a little Florentine, was never 
troubled by externals, or daunted by mere sofas 
and chairs; he stood and looked around him with 
perfect composure; and Moufflon, whose attitude, 
when he was not romping, was always one of 
magisterial gravity, sat on his haunches and did 
the same. 

Soon the foreigner he had seen in the fore¬ 
noon entered and spoke to him, and led him into 
another chamber, where stretched on a couch was 
a little wan-faced boy about seven years old; 
a pretty boy, but so pallid, so wasted, so help¬ 
less. This poor little boy was heir to a great 
name and a great fortune, but all the science 
in the world could not make him strong enough 
to run about among the daisies, or able to draw 
a single breath without pain. A feeble smile lit 
up his face as he saw Moufflou and Lolo; then 
a shadow chased it away. 



MOUFFLOU ACgUITTED HIMSELF ALLY AS EVER, 


















































































































































MOUFFLOU 


21 


‘‘Little boy is lame like me/^ he said, in a 
tongue Lolo did not understand. 

“Yes, but he is a strong little boy, and can 
move about, as perhaps the suns of his country 
will make you do,’’ said the gentleman, who was 
the poor little boy’s father. “He has brought 
you his poodle to amuse you. What a handsome 
dog! is it not?” 

“Oh, hufflins!’^ said the poor little fellow, 
stretching out his wasted hands to Moufflon, who 
submitted his leonine crest to the caress. 

Then Lolo went through the performance, 
and Moufflon acquitted himself ably as ever; 
and the little invalid laughed and shouted with 
his tiny thin voice, and enjoyed it all immensely, 
and rained cakes and biscuits on both the poodle 
and its master. Lolo crumped the pastries with 
willing white teeth, and Moufflon did no less. 
Then they got up to go, and the sick child on 
the couch burst into fretful lamentations and 
outcries. 

“I want the dog! I will have the dog!” was 
all he kept repeating. 

But Lolo did not know what he said, and 
was only sorry to see him so unhappy. 

“You shall have the dog to-morrow,” said 
the gentleman, to pacify his little son; and he 


22 


MOUFFLOU 


hurried Lolo and Moufflon out of the room, and 
consigned them to a servant, having given Lolo 
five francs this time. 

‘‘Why, Moufflon,’’ said Lolo, with a chuckle 
of delight, “if we could find a foreigner every 
day, we could eat meat at supper. Moufflon, and 
go to the theatre every evening!” 

And he and his crutch clattered home with 
great eagerness and excitement, and Moufflon 
trotted on his four frilled feet, the blue bow with 
which Bice had tied up his curls on the top of 
his head, fiuttering in the wind. But, alas! even 
his five francs could bring no comfort at home. 
He found his whole family wailing and mourn¬ 
ing in utterly inconsolable distress. 

Tasso had drawn his niunber that morning, 
and the number was seven, and he must go and 
be a conscript for three years. 

The poor young man stood in the midst of his 
weeping brothers and sisters, with his mother 
leaning against his shoulder, and doAvn his own 
brown cheeks the tears were falling. He must 
go, and lose his place in the public gardens, and 
leave his people to starve as they might, and be 
put in a tomfool’s jacket, and drafted off among 
cursing and swearing and strange faces, friend¬ 
less, homeless, miserable! And the mother,— 
what would become of the mother ? 


MOUFFLOU 


23 


Tasso was the best of lads and the mildest. 
He was quite happy sweeping up the leaves in 
the long alleys of the Cascine, or mowing the 
green lawns under the ilex avenues, and coming 
home at supper-time among the merry little peo¬ 
ple and the good woman that he loved. He was 
quite contented; he wanted nothing, only to be 
let alone; and they would not let him alone. They 
would haul him away to put a heavy musket 
in his hand and a heavy knapsack on his back, 
and drill him, and curse him, and make him into 
a human target, a live popinjay. 

No one had any heed for Lolo and his five 
francs, and Moufflon, understanding that some 
great sorrow had fallen on his friends, sat down 
and lifted up his voice and howled. 

Tasso must go away!—that was all they un¬ 
derstood. For three long years they must go 
without the sight of his face, the aid of his 
strength, the pleasure of his smile: Tasso must 
go! When Lolo understood the calamity that 
had befallen them, he gathered Moufflon up 
against his breast, and sat down, too, on the fioor 
beside him and cried as if he would never stop 
crying. 

There was no help for it: it was one of those 
misfortunes which are, as we say in Italian, like 


24 


MOUFFLOU 


a tile tumbled on the head. The tile drops from 
a height, and the poor head bows under the un¬ 
seen blow. That is all. 

‘^What is the use of thatT’ said the mother, 
passionately, when Lolo showed her his five 
francs. ‘‘It will not buy Tasso’s discharge.” 

Lolo felt that his mother was cruel and un¬ 
just, and crept to bed with Moufflon. Moufflon 
always slept on Lolo’s feet. 

The next morning Lolo got up before sun¬ 
rise, and he and Moufflon accompanied Tasso to 
his work in the Cascine. 

Lolo loved his brother, and clung to every 
moment whilst they could still be together. 

'“Can nothing keep you, Tasso?” he said, 
despairingly, as they went down the leafy aisles, 
whilst the Arno water was growing golden as 
the sun rose. 

Tasso sighed. 

“Nothing, dear. Unless Gesii would send me 
a thousand francs to buy a substitute.” 

And he knew he might as well have said, 
“If one could coin gold ducats out of the sun¬ 
beams on Arno water.” 

Lolo was very sorrowful as he lay on the 
grass in the meadow where Tasso was at work, 
and the poodle lay stretched beside him. 


MOUFFLOU 


25 


When Lolo went home to dinner (Tasso took 
his wrapped in a handkerchief) he found his 
mother very agitated and excited. She was 
laughing one moment, crying the next. She was 
passionate and peevish, tender and jocose by 
turns; there was something forced and feverish 
about her which the children felt but did not 
comprehend. She was a woman of not very much 
intelligence, and she had a secret, and she carried 
it ill, and knew not what to do with it; but they 
could not tell that. They only felt a vague sense 
of disturbance and timidtity at her unwonted 
manner. 

The meal over (it was only bean-soup, and 
that is soon eaten), the mother said sharply to 
Lolo, ‘‘Your aunt Anita wants you this after¬ 
noon. She has to go out, and you are needed to 
stay with the children: be off with you.’^ 

Lolo was an obedient child; he took his hat 
and jumped up as quickly as his halting hip 
would let him. He called Moufflou, who was 
asleep. 

“Leave the dog,’^ said his mother, sharply. 
“^Mta will not have him messing and carrying 
mud about her nice clean rooms. She told me 
so. Leave him, I say.’^ 

“Leave Moufflou!’’ echoed Lolo, for never in 


26 


MOUFFLOU 


all Moufflon's life Fad Lolo parted from him. 
Leave Moufflon! He stared open-eyed and open- 
mouthed at his mother. What could have come 
to her 

''Leave him, I say," she repeated, more 
sharply than ever. "Must I speak twice to my 
own children'? Be off with you, and leave the 
dog, I say." 

And she clutched Moufflon by his long silky 
mane and dragged him backwards, whilst with 
the other hand she thrust out of the door Lolo 
and Bice. 

Lolo began to hammer with his crutch at the 
door thus closed on him; but Bice coaxed and 
entreated him. 

"Poor mother has been so worried about 
Tasso,' ’ she pleaded. '' And what harm can come 
to Moufflbu *? And I do think he was tired, Lolo; 
the Cascine is a long way; and it is quite true that 
Aunt 'Nita never liked him." 

So by one means and another she coaxed her 
brother away; and they went almost in silence 
to where their aunt Anita dwelt, which was across 
the river, near the dark-red bell-shaped dome of 
Santa, Spirito. 

It w^as true that her aunt had wanted them 
to mind her room and her babies whilst she was 


MOUFFLOU 


27 


away carrying home some lace to a villa outside 
the Roman gate, for she was a lace-washer and 
clear-starcher by trade. There they had to stay in 
the little dark room with the two babies, with 
nothing to amuse the time except the clang of 
the bells of the church of the Holy Spirit, and 
the voices of the lemonade-sellers shouting in 
the street below. Aunt Anita did not get back 
till it was more than dusk, and the two children 
trotted homeward hand in hand, Lolo’s leg drag¬ 
ging itself painfully along, for without Moufflou^s 
white figure dancing on before him he felt very 
tired indeed. It was pitch dark when they got 
to Or San Michele, and the lamps burned dully. 

Lolo stumped up the stairs wearily, with a 
vague, dull fear at his small heart. 

‘ ^ Moufflou, Moufflou! ’ ^ he called. Where was 
Moufflou ? Always at the first sound of his crutch 
the poodle came fiying towards him. Moufflou, 
Moufflou!’’ he called all the way up the long, 
dark twisting stone stair. He pushed open the 
door, and he called again, ^‘Moufflou, Moufflon!” 

But no dog answered to his call. 

‘‘Mother, where is Moufflou?” he asked, star¬ 
ing with blinking, dazzled eyes into the oil-lit 
room where his mother sat knitting, Tasso was 
not then home from work. His mother went on 


28 MOUFFLOU 

with her knitting; there was an uneasy look on 
her face. 

‘‘Mother, what have you done with Moufflon, 
my Moufflon?’’ said Lolo, wrlth a look that was 
almost stern on his ten-year-old face. 

Then his mother, without looking up and 
moving her knitting-needles very rapidly, said,— 

“Moufflon is sold!” 

And little Dina, who was a quick, pert child, 
cried, with a shrill voice,— 

“Mother has sold him for a thousand francs 
to the foreign gentleman.” 

“Sold him!” 

Lolo grew white and grew cold as ice; he 
stammered, threw up his hands over his head, 
gasped a little for breath, then fell down in a 
dead swoon, his poor useless limb doubled under 
him. 

When Tasso came home that sad night and 
found his little brother shivering, moaning, and 
half delirious, and when he heard what had been 
done, he was sorely grieved. 

“Oh, mother, how could you do it?” he cried. 
“Poor, poor Moufflou! and Lolo loves him so!” 

“I have got the money,” said his mother, 
feverishly, “and you will not need to go for a 
soldier: we can buy your substitute. What is 



MOUFFLOU 


29 


a poodle, that you mourn about it"? We can get 
another poodle for Lolo/^ 

‘^Another will not be Moufflon,’^ said Tasso, 
and yet was seized with such a frantic happiness 
himself at the knowledge that he would not need 
go to the army, that he, too, felt as if he were 
drunk on new wine, and had not the heart to 
rebuke his mother. 

‘‘A thousand francs!’^ he muttered; ^‘a thou¬ 
sand francs! Dio mio! Who could ever have 
fancied anybody would have given such a price 
for a common white poodle^ One would think 
the gentleman had bought the church and the 
tabernacle!’’ 

‘‘Fools and their money are soon parted,” 
said his mother, with cross contempt. 

It was true: she had sold Moufflou. 

The English gentleman had called on her 
while Lolo and the dog had been in the Cascine, 
and had said that he was desirous of buying the 
poodle, which had so diverted his sick child that 
the little invalid would not be comforted unless 
he possessed it. Now, at any other time the good 
woman would have sturdily refused any idea of 
selling Moufflou; but that morning the thou¬ 
sand francs which would buy Tasso’s substitute 
were forever in her mind and before her eyes. 


30 


MOUFFLOU 


When she heard the foreigner hex’ heart gave a 
great leap, and her head swam giddily, and she 
thought, in a spasm of longing—if she could get 
those thousand francs! But though she was so 
dizzy and so upset she retained her grip on her 
native Florentine shrewdness. She said nothing 
of her need of the money; not a syllable of her 
sore distress. On the contrary, she was coy and 
wary, affected great reluctance to part with her 
pet, invented a great offer made for him by a 
director of a circus, and finally let fall a hint 
that less than a thousand francs she could never 
take for poor Moufflon. 

The gentleman assented with so much willing¬ 
ness to the price that she instantly regretted 
not having asked double. He told her that if 
she would take the poodle that afternoon to his 
hotel the money should be paid to her; so she 
despatched her children after their noonday meal 
in various directions, and herself took Moufflon 
to his doom. She could not believe her senses 
when ten hundred-franc notes were put into her 
hand. She scrawled her signature, Rosina Cal- 
abucci, to a formal receipt, and went away, leav¬ 
ing Moufflon in his new owner’s rooms, and hear¬ 
ing his howls and moans pursue her all the way 
down the staircase and out into the air. 


MOUFFLOU 


31 


She was not easy at what she had done. 

‘‘It seemed/^ she said to herself, “like selling 
a Christian. 

But then to keep her eldest son at home— 
what a joy that was! On the whole, she cried 
so and laughed so as she went down the Lung^ 
Arno that once or twice people looked at her, 
thinking her out of her senses, and a guard spoke 
to her angrily. 

Meanwhile, Lolo was sick and delirious with 
grief. Twenty times he got out of his bed and 
screamed to be allowed to go with Moufflon, and 
twenty times his mother and his brothers put him 
back again and held him down and tried in vain 
to quiet him. 

The child was beside himself with misery. 
“Moufflon! Moufflon!’’ he sobbed at every mo¬ 
ment ; and by night he was in a raging fever, and 
when his mother, frightened, ran in and called 
in the doctor of the quarter, that worthy shook 
his head and said something as to a shock of the 
nervous system, and muttered a long word— 
“meningitis.” 

Lolo took a hatred to the sight of Tasso, and 
thrust him away, and his mother, too. 

“It is for you Moufflon is sold,” he said, with 
his little teeth and hands tight clinched. 



32 


MOUFFLOU 


After a day or two Tasso felt as if lie could 
not bear his life, and went down to the hotel to 
see if the foreign gentleman would allow him 
to have Moufflou back for half an hour to quiet 
his little brother by a sight of him. But at the 
hotel he was told that the Milord Inglese who had 
bought the dog of Kosina Calabucci had gone 
that same night of the purchase to Eome, 
to Naples, to Palermo, chi sa? 

‘‘And Moufflou with him?’’ asked Tasso. 

“The barbone he had bought went with him,” 
said the porter of the hotel. “Such a beast! 
Howling, shrieking, raging all the day, and all 
the paint scratched off the salon door.” 

Poor Moufflou! Tasso’s heart was heavy as 
he heard of that sad helpless misery of their 
bartered favorite and friend. 

“What matter?” saia his mother, fiercely, 
when he told her. “A dog is a dog. Thy will 
feed him better than we could. In a week he will 
have forgotten— che!'’ 

But Tasso feared that Moufflou would not 
forget. Lolo certainly would not. The doctor 
qame to the bedside twice a day, and ice and water 
were kept on the aching hot little head that had 
got the malady with the long name, and for the 
chief part of the time Lolo lay quiet, dull, and 


MOUFFLOU 


33 


stupid, breathing heavily, and then at intervals 
cried and sobbed and shrieked hysterically for 
Moufflou. 

‘‘Can you not get what he calls for to quiet 
him with a sight of it“?^’ said the doctor. But 
that was not possible, and poor Rosina covered 
her head with her apron and felt a guilty creature. 

“Still, you will not go to the army,’’ she said 
to Tasso, clinging to that immense joy for her 
consolation. “Only think! we can pay Guido 
Squarcione to go for you. He always said he 
would go if anybody would pay him. Oh, my 
Tasso, surely to keep you is worth a dog’s life!” 

“And Lolo’s?” said Tasso, gloomily. “Xay, 
mother, it works ill to meddle too much with 
fate. I drew my number; I was bound to go. 
Heaven would have made it up to you somehow.” 

‘ ‘ Heaven sent me the foreigner; the Madonna’s 
own self sent him to ease a mother’s pain,” 
said Rosina, rapidly and angrily. “There are 
the thousand francs safe to hand in the cassone, 
and what, pray, is it we miss ? Only a dog like 
a sheep, that brought gallons of mud in with 
him every time it rained, and ate as much as 
any one of you.” 

“But Lolo?” said Tasso, under his breath. 

His mother was so irritated and so tormented 

3 


34 


MOUFFLOU 


by her own conscience that sbe upset all the cab¬ 
bage broth into the burning charcoal. 

^‘Lolo was always a little fool, thinking of 
nothing but the church and the dog and nasty 
field-flowers, ’ ’ she said, angrily. ^ ‘ I humored him 
ever too much because of the hurt to his hip, 
and so—and so- 

Then the poor soul made matters worse by 
dropping her tears into the saucepan, and fan¬ 
ning the charcoal so furiously that the flame 
caught her fan of cane-leaves, and would have 
burned her arm had not Tasso been there. 

“You are my prop and safety always. Who 
would not have done what I did? Not Santa 
Felicita herself,’’ she said, with a great sob. 

But all this did not cure poor Lolo. 

The days and the weeks of the golden autumn 
weather passed away, and^ he was always in 
danger, and the small close room where he slept 
with Sandro and Beppo and Tasso was not one 
to cure such an illness as had now beset him. 
Tasso went to his work with a sick heart in the 
Cascine, where the colchicum was all lilac among 
the meadow grass, and the ashes and elms were 
taking their first flush of the coming autumnal 
change. He did hot think Lolo would ever get 
well, and the good lad felt as if he had been the 
murderer of his little brother. 



MOUFFLOU 


35 


True, lie had had no hand or voice in the sale 
of Moufflou, but Moufflou had been sold for his 
sake. It made him feel half guilty, very un- 
quite unworthy of all the sacrifice that had 
been made for him. ‘ ‘ Nobody should meddle with 
fate,’’ thought Tasso, who knew his grandfather 
had died in San Bonifazio because he had driven 
himself mad over the dream-book trying to get 
lucky numbers for the lottery and become a rich 
man at a stroke. 

It was rapture, indeed, to know that he was 
free of the army for a time at least, that he might 
go on undisturbed at his healthful labor, and get 
a raise in wages as time went on, and dwell in 
peace with his family, and perhaps—^perhaps in 
time earn enough to marry pretty flaxen-haired 
Biondina, the daughter of the barber in the piaz- 
zeta. It was rapture indeed; but then poor 
Moufflou!—and poor, poor Lolo! Tasso felt as 
if he had bought his own exemption by seeing his 
little brother and the good dog torn in pieces 
and buried alive for his service. 

And where was poor Moufflou ? 

Gone far away somewhere south in the hur¬ 
rying, screeching, vomiting, braying train that 
it made Tasso giddy only to look at as it rushed 
by the green meadows beyond the Cascine on its 
way to the sea. 


36 


MOUFFLOU 


“If he could see the dog he cries so for, it 
might save him, ’ ^ said the doctor, who stood with | 
a grave face watching Lolo. | 

But that was beyond any one’s power. No | 
one could tell where Moufflou was. He might be 
carried away to England, to Prance, to Russia, 
to America—who could say ? They did not know 
where his purchaser had gone. Moufflou even 
might be dead. 

The poor mother, when the doctor said that, 
went and looked at the ten hundred-franc notes 
that were once like angels’ faces to her, and said 
to them,— 

“Oh, you children of Satan, why did you 
tempt me? I sold the poor, innocent, trustful 
beast to get you, and now my child is dying!” 

Her eldest son would stay at home, indeed; 
but if this little lame one died! Rosina Calabucci 
would have given up the notes and consented 
never to own five francs in her life if only she 
could have gone back over the time and kept 
Moufflou, and seen his little master running out 
with him into the sunshine. 

More than a month went by, and Lolo lay in 
the same state, his yellow hair shorn, his eyes 
dilated and yet stupid, life kept in him by a 
spoonful of milk, a lump of ice, a drink of lemon- 


MOUFFLOU 


37 


water; alwa 5 ^s muttering, when he spoke at all, 
‘‘Moufflon, Moufflon, dov’ e Moufflon?’’ and lying 
for days together in somnolence and unconscious¬ 
ness, with the fire eating at his brain and the 
weight lying on it like a stone. 

The neighbors were kind, and brought fruit 
and the like, and sat up with him, and chattered 
so all at once in one continuous brawl that they 
were enough in themselves to kill him, for such is 
ever the Italian fashion of sympathy in all illness. 

But Lolo did not get well, did not even seem 
to see the light at all, or to distinguish any sounds 
around him; and the doctor in plain words told 
Eosina Calabucci that her little boy must die. 
Die, and the church so near ? She could not be¬ 
lieve it. Could St. Mark, and St. George, and 
the rest that he had loved so do nothing for him? 
No, said the doctor, they could do nothing; the 
dog might do something, since the brain had so 
fastened on that one idea; but then they had sold 
the dog. 

“Yes; I sold him!” said the poor mother, 
breaking into fioods of remorseful tears. 

So at last the end drew so nigh that one twi¬ 
light time the priest came out of the great arched 
door that is next St. Mark, with the Host up¬ 
lifted, and a little acolyte ringing the bell before 


38 


MOUFFLOU 


it, and passed across the piazzetta, and went up 
the dark staircase of Eosina’s dwelling, and 
passed through the weeping, terrified children, 
and went to the bedside of Lolo. 

Lolo was unconscious, but the holy man 
touched his little body and limbs with the sacred 
oil, and prayed over him, and then stood sorrow¬ 
ful with bowed head. 

Lolo had had his first communion in the sum¬ 
mer, and in his preparation for it had shown an 
intelligence and devoutness that had won the 
priest’s gentle heart. 

Standing there, the holy man commended the 
innocent soul to Grod. It was the last service to 
be rendered to him save that very last of all when 
the funeral office should be read above his little 
grave among the millions of nameless dead at the 
sepulchres of the poor at Trebbiano. 

All was still as the priest’s voice ceased; only 
the sobs of the mother and of the children broke 
the stillness as they kneeled; the hand of Biondina 
had stolen into Tasso’s. 

Suddenly, there was a loud scuffling noise; 
hurrying feet came patter, patter, patter up the 
stairs; a ball of mud and dust flew over the heads 
of the kneeling figures, fleet as the wind Moufflon 
dashed through the room and leaped upon the 
bed. 


MOUFFLOU 


39 


Lolo opened his heavy eyes, and a sudden 
light of consciousness gleamed in them like a 
sunbeam. ^ ^ Moufflon! ’ ^ he murmured, in his little 
thin faint voice. The dog pressed close to his 
breast and kissed his wasted face. 

Moufflon was come home I 
And Lolo came home too, for death let go its 
hold upon him. Little by little, very faintly and 
flickeringiy and very uncertainly at the first, 
life returned to the poor little body, and reason 
to the tormented^ heated little brain. Moufflon 
was his physician; Moufflon, who, himself a skele¬ 
ton under his matted curls, would not stir from 
his side: and looked at him all day long with two 
beaming brown eyes full of unutterable love. 

Lolo was happy; he asked no questions,— 
was too weak, indeed, even to wonder. He had 
Moufflon—-that was enough. 

Alas! though they dared not say so in his 
hearing, it was not enough for his elders. His 
mother and Tasso knew that the poodle had been 
sold and paid for; that they could lay no claim 
to keep him; and that almost certainly his pur¬ 
chaser would seek him out and assert his indis¬ 
putable right to him. And then how would Lolo 
ever bear that second parting?—Lolo, so weak 
that he weighed no more than if he had been a 
little bird. 


40 


MOUFFLOU 


Moufflou liad, no doubt, travelled a long dis¬ 
tance and suffered much. He was but skin and 
bone; he bore the marks of blows and kicks; his 
once silken hair was all discolored and matted; 
he had, no doubt, travelled far. But then his pur¬ 
chaser would be sure to ask for him, soon or late, 
at his old home; and then? Well, then if they 
did not give him up themselves, the law would 
make them. 

Kosina Calabucci and Tasso, though they 
dared say nothing before any of the children, 
felt their hearts in their mouths at every step 
on the stair, and the first interrogation of Tasso 
every evening when he came from his work was, 
‘^Has any one come for Moufflou?’’ For ten 
days no one came, and their first terrors lulled 
a little. 

On the eleventh morning, a feast-day, on 
which Tasso was not going to his labors in the 
Cascine, there came a person, with a foreign 
look, who said the words they so much dreaded 
to hear: ‘‘Has the poodle that you sold to an 
English gentleman come back to you?” 

Yes: his English master claimed him! 

The servant said that they had missed the 
dog in Eome a few days after buying him and 
taking him there; that he had been searched for 


MOUFFLOU 


41 


in vain, and that his master had thought it pos¬ 
sible the animal might have found his way back 
to his old home: there had been stories of such 
wonderful sagacity in dogs: anyhow, he had sent 
for him on the chance; he was himself back on 
the Lung’ Arno. The servant pulled from his 
pocket a chain, and said his orders were to take 
the poodle away at once: the little sick gentle¬ 
man had fretted very much about his loss. 

Tasso heard in a very agony of despair. To 
take Moufflon away now would be to kill Lolo,— 
Lolo so feeble still, so unable to understand, so 
passionately alive to every sight and sound of 
Moufflon, l}dng for hours together motionless 
with his hand buried in the poodle’s curls, say¬ 
ing nothing, only smiling now and then, and mur¬ 
muring a word or two in Moufflon’s ear. 

‘^The dog did come home,” said Tasso, at 
length, in a low voice; angels must have shown 
him the road, poor beast! From Rome! Only 
to think of it, from Rome! And he a dumb thing! 
I tell 3 ^ou he is here, honestly: so will you not 
trust me just so far as this'? Will you let me go 
with you and speak to the English lord before you 
take the dog away 'F I have a little brother sorely 
ill-” 

He could not speak more, for tears that choked 
his voice. 


42 


MOUFFLOU 


At last the messenger agreed so far as this. 
Tasso might go first and see the master, but he 
would stay here and have a care they did not 
spirit the dog away,—^‘for a thousand francs 
were paid for him,’’ added the man, ^^and a dog 
that can come all the way from Rome by itself 
must be an imcanny creature.” 

Tasso thanked him, went up-stairs, was thank¬ 
ful that his mother was at mass and could not 
dispute with him, took the ten hundred-franc 
notes from the old oak cassone, and with them 
in his breast-pocket walked out into the air. He 
was but a poor working lad, but he had made 
up his mind to do an heroic deed, for self-sacrifice 
is always heroic. He went straightway to the 
hotel where the English milord was, and when 
he had got there remembered that still he did 
not know the name of Moufflon’s ovuier; but the 
people of the hotel knew him as Rosina Cala- 
bucci’s son, and guessed what he wanted, and said 
the gentleman who had lost the poodle was within 
up-stairs and they would tell him. 

Tasso waited some half-hour with his heart 
beating sorely against the packet of hundred- 
franc notes. At last he was beckoned up-stairs, 
and there he saw a foreigner with a mild fair 
face, and a very lovely lady and a delicate child 


MOUFFLOU 


43 


who was lying on a conch. ‘‘Moufflon! Where 
is Mouffloncried the little child, impatiently, 
as he saw the youth enter. 

Tasso took his hat off, and stood in the door¬ 
way an embrowned, healthy, not ungraceful fig¬ 
ure, in his working-clothes of rough blue stuff. 

“If you please, most illustrious,’’ he stam¬ 
mered, “poor Moufflon has come home.” 

The child gave a cry of delight; the gentleman 
and lady one of wonder. Come home! All the 
way from Rome! 

“Yes, he has, most illustrious,” said Tasso, 
gaining courage and eloquence; ‘ ‘ and now I want 
to beg something of you. We are poor, and I drew 
a bad number, and it was for that my mother sold 
Moufflon. For myself, I did not know anything 
of it; but she thought she would buy my sub¬ 
stitute, and of course she could; but Moufflon is 
come home, and my little brother Lolo, the little 
boy your most illustrious first saw playing with 
the poodle, fell ill of the grief of losing Moufflon, 
and for a month has lain saying nothing sensible, 
but only calling for the dog, and my old grand¬ 
father died of worrying himself mad over the 
lottery numbers, and Lolo was so near dying that 
the Blessed Host had been brought, and the holy 
oil had been put on him, when all at once there 


44 


MOUFFLOU 


rushes in Moufflou, skin and bone, and covered 
with mud, and at the sight of him Lolo comes 
back to his senses, and that is now ten days ago, 
and though Lolo is still as weak as a new-born 
thing, he is always sensible, and takes what we 
give him to eat, and lies always looking at Mouf¬ 
flou, and smiling, and saying, ‘Moufflou! Mouf¬ 
flou!’ and, most illustrious, I know well you have 
bought the dog, and the law is with you, and by 
the law you claim it; but I thought perhaps, as 
Lolo loves him so, you would let us keep the dog, 
and would take back the thousand francs, and 
myself I will go and be a soldier, and heaven 
will take care of them all somehow.” 

Then Tasso, having said all this in one breath¬ 
less, monotonous recitative, took the thousand 
francs out of his breast-pocket and held them 
out timidly towards the foreign gentleman, who 
motioned them aside and stood silent. 

“Did you understand, Victor,” he said, at 
last, to his little son. 

The child hid his face in his cushions. 

“Yes, I did understand something: let Lolo 
keep him; Moufflou was not happy with me.” 

But he burst out crying as he said it. 

Moufflfou had run away from him. 

Moufflou had never loved him, for all his sweet 


MOUFFLOU 


45 


cakes and fond caresses and platefuls of delicate 
savory meats. Moufflon had run away and found 
his own road over two hundred miles and more 
to go back to some little hungry children, who 
never had enough to eat themselves, and so, cer¬ 
tainly, could never give enough to eat to the dog. 
Poor little boy! He was so rich and so pam¬ 
pered and so powerful, and yet he could never 
make Moufflon love him! 

Tasso, who understood nothing that was said, 
laid the ten hundred-franc notes down on a table 
near him. 

‘Hf you would take them, most illustrious, 
and give me back what my mother wrote when 
she sold Moufflon,^’ he said, timidly, would 
pray for you night and day, and Lolo would too; 
and as for the dog, we will get a puppy and train 
him for your little signorino; they can all do 
tricks, more or less, it comes by nature; and as 
for me, I will go to the army willingly; it is not 
right to interfere with fate; my old grandfather 
Idled mad because he would try to be a rich man, 
by dreaming about it and pulling destiny by the 
jears, as if she were a kicking mule; only, I do 
[pray of you, do not take away Moufflon. And 
|to think he trotted all those miles and miles, and 
jyou carried him by train, too, and he never could 



46 MOUFFLOU 

have seen the road, and he has no power of speech 
to ask-’’ 

Tasso broke down again in his eloquence, and 
drew the back of his hand across his wet eye¬ 
lashes. 

The English gentleman was not altogether 
unmoved. 

^ ‘ Poor faithful dog! ’ ’ he said, with a sigh. ‘ ^ I 
am afraid we were very cruel to him, meaning 
to be kind. No; we will not claim him, and I do 
not think you should go for a soldier; you seem 
so good a lad, and your mother must need you. 
Keep the money, my boy, and in payment you 
shall train up the puppy you talk of, and bring 
him to my little boy. I will come and see your 
mother and Lolo to-morrow. All the way from 
Rome! What wonderful sagacity! what match¬ 
less fidelity!’’ 

You can imagine, without any telling of mine, 
the joy that reigned in Moufflon’s home when 
Tasso returned thither with the money and the 
good tidings both. His substitute was bought 
without a day’s delay, and Lolo rapidly recov¬ 
ered. As for Moufflon, he could never tell them 
his troubles, his wanderings, his difficulties, his 
perils; he could never tell them by what miracu¬ 
lous knowledge he had found his way across Italy, 


MOUFFLOU 


47 


from the gates of Rome to the gates of Florence. 
But he soon grew plump again, and merry, and 
his love for Lolo was yet greater than before. 

By the winter all the family went to live on 
an estate near Spezia that the English gentle¬ 
man had purchased, and there Moufflon was hap¬ 
pier than ever. The little English boy is gaming 
strength in the soft air, and he and Lolo are great 
friends, and play with Moufflon and the poodle 
puppy half the day upon the sunny terraces and 
under the green orange boughs. Tasso is one of 
the gardeners there; he will have to serve as a 
soldier probably in some category or another, 
but he is safe for the time, and is happy. Lolo, 
whose lameness will always exempt him from 
military service, when he grows to be a man 
means to be a florist, and a great one. He has 
learned to read, as the first step on the road of his 
ambition. 

‘^But oh. Moufflon, how did you find your way 
home?’’ he asks the dog a hundred times a week. 

How indeed! 

No one ever knew how Moufflon had made 
that long journey on foot, so many weary miles; 
but beyond a doubt he had done it alone and 
unaided, for if any one had helped him they 
would have come home with him to claim the 
reward. 


48 


MOUFFLOU 


And that you may not wonder too greatly at 
Moufflou'S miraculous journey on his four bare 
feet, I will add here two facts known to friends 
of mine, of whose truthfulness there can be no 
doubt. 

One concerns a French poodle who was pur¬ 
chased in Paris by the friend of my friend, and 
brought all the way from Paris to Milan by train. 
In a few days after his arrival in Milan the 
poodle was missing; and nothing more was 
heard or known of him until many weeks later 
his quondam owner in Paris, on opening his 
door one morning, found the dog stretched dying 
on the threshold of his old home. 

That is one fact; not a story, mind you, a fact. 

The other is related to me by an Italian noble¬ 
man, who in his youth belonged to the Guardia 
Nobile of Tuscany. That brilliant corps of ele¬ 
gant gentlemen owned a regimental pet, a poodle 
also, a fine merry and handsome dog of its kind; 
and the officers all loved and made much of him, 
except, alas! the commandant of the regiment, 
who hated him, because when the officers were 
on parade or riding in escort the poodle was sure 
to be jumping and frisking about in front of 
them. It is difficult to see where the harm of 
this was, but this odious old martinet vowed ven- 


MOUFFLOU 


49 


geance against the dog, and, being of course all 
powerful in his own corps, ordered the exile from 
Florence of the poor fellow. He was sent to a 
farm at Prato, twenty miles off, along the hills; 
but very soon he found his way back to Florence. 
He was then sent to Leghorn, forty miles off, but 
in a week’s time had returned to his old comrades. 
He was then, by order of his unrelenting foe, 
shipped to the island of Sardinia. How he did 
it no one ever could tell, for he was carried safely 
to Sardinia and placed inland there in kind cus¬ 
tody, but in some wonderful way the poor dog 
must have found out the sea and hidden himself 
on board a returning vessel, for in a month’s time 
from his exile to the island he was back again 
among his comrades in Florence. Now, what I 
have to tell you almost breaks my heart to say, 
and will, I think, quite break yours to hear: alas! 
the brute of a commandant, untouched by such 
marvellous cleverness and faithfulness, was his 
enemy to the bitter end, and, in inexorable hatred, 
had him shot! Oh, when you grow to manhood 
and have power, use it with tenderness! 



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LAMPBLACK 


”^00R black paint lay very unhappy in its 



tube one day alone, having tumbled out of 


an artist’s color-box and lying quite un¬ 
noticed for a year. ‘‘I am only Lampblack,” he 
said to himself. ‘ ‘ The master never looks at me: 
he says I am heavy, dull, lustreless, useless. I 
wish I could cake and dry up and die, as poor 
Plakewhite did when he thought she turned yel¬ 
low and deserted her.” 

But Lampblack could not die; he could only 
lie in his tin tube and pine, like a silly, sorrowful 
thing as he was, in company with some broken 
bits of charcoal and a rusty palette-knife. The 
master never touched him; month after month 
passed by, and he was never thought of; the other 
paints had all their turn of fair fortune, and 
went out into the world to great academies and 
mighty palaces, transfigured and rejoicing in a 
thousand beautiful shapes and services. But 
Lampblack was always passed over as dull and 
coarse, which indeed he was, and knew himself 
to be so, poor fellow, which made it all the worse. 
^‘You are only a deposit!” said the other colors 


63 


54 


LAMPBLACK 


to him; and he felt that it was disgraceful to be 
a deposit, though he was not quite sure what it 
meant. 

“If only I were happy like the others!’’ 
thought poor, sooty Lampblack, sorrowful in his 
corner. “There is Bistre, now, he is not so very 
much better-looking that I am, and yet they can 
do nothing without him, whether it is a girl’s 
face or a wimple in a river!” 

The others were all so happy in this beau¬ 
tiful, bright studio, whose open casements were 
hung with myrtle and passion-flower, and whose 
silence was fllled with the singing of nightingales. 
Cobalt, with a touch or two, became the loveli¬ 
ness of summer skies at morning; the Lakes and 
Carmines bloomed in a thousand exquisite flowers 
and fancies; the Chromes and Ochres (mere dull 
earths) were allowed to spread themselves in 
sheets of gold that took the shine of the sun into 
the darkest places; limber, a sombre and gloomy 
thing, could lurk yet in a child’s curls and laugh 
in a child’s smiles; whilst all the families of the 
Vermilions, the Blues, the Greens, lived in a per¬ 
petual glory of sunset or sunrise, of ocean waves 
or autumn woods, of kingly pageant or of martial 
pomp. 

It was very hard. Poor Lampblack felt as 



LAMPBLACK 


55 


if his very heart would break, above all when 
he thought of pretty little Rose Madder, whom he 
loved dearly, and who never would even look 
at him, because she was so very proud, being her¬ 
self always placed in nothing less than rosy 
clouds, or the hearts of roses, or something as 
fair and spiritual. 

am only a wretched deposit!’’ sighed 
Lampblack, and the rusty palette-knife grumbled 
back, ‘‘My own life has been ruined in cleaning 
dirty brushes, and see what the gratitude of men 
and brushes is!” 

“But at least you have been of use once; but I 
never am—never!” said Lampblack, wearily; 
and indeed he had been there so long that the 
spiders had spun their silver fleeces all about 
him, and he was growing as gray as an old bottle 
does in a dark cellar. 

At that moment the door of the studio opened, 
and there came a flood of light, and the step of 
a man was heard: the hearts of all the colors 
jumped for joy, because the step was that of 
their magician, who out of mere common clays 
and ground ores could raise them at a touch into 
splendors of the gods and divinities immortal. 

Only the heart of poor dusty Lampblack could 
not beat a throb the more, because he was always 


66 


LAMPBLACK 


left alone and never was thought worthy even 
of a glance. He could not believe his senses when 
this afternoon—oh, miracle and ecstasy!—^the 
step of the master crossed the floor to the ob¬ 
scured corner where he lay under his spiders’ 
webs, and the hand of the master touched him. 
Lampblack felt sick and faint with rapture. Had 
recognition come at last ? 

The master took him up: ^ ‘ You will do for this 
work,” he said; and Lampblack was borne 
trembling to an easel. The colors, for once in 
their turn neglected, crowded together to watch, 
looking in their bright tin tubes like rows of little 
soldiers in armor. 

‘ Ht is the old dull Deposit, ’ ’ they murmured to 
one another, and felt contemptuous, yet were 
curious, as scornful people often will be. 

‘^But I am going to be glorious and great,” 
thought Lampblack, and his heart swelled high; 
for never more would they be able to hurl the 
name of Deposit at him, a name which hurt him 
none the less, but all the more indeed, because it 
was unintelligible. 

“You will do for this work,” said the master, 
and let Lampblack out of his metal prison-house 
into the light and touched him with the brush that 
was the wand of magic. 



OLD DEPOSIT IS GOING TO BE A SIGN-POST,” THEY CRIED 





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LAMPBLACK 


57 


‘‘What am I going to be*?’’ wondered Lamp¬ 
black, as he felt himself taken on to a large piece 
of deal board, so large that he felt he must be 
going to make the outline of an athlete or the 
shadows of a tempest at the least. 

Himself he could not tell what he was becom¬ 
ing: he was happy enough and grand enough 
only to be employed, and, as he was being used, 
began to dream a thousand things of all the scenes 
he would be in, and all the hues that he would 
wear, and all the praise that he would hear when 
he went out into that wonderful great world of 
which his master was an idol. Prom his secret 
dreams he was harshly roused; all the colors were 
laughing and tittering round him till the little 
tin helmets they wore shook with their merriment. 

“Old Deposit is going to be a sign-post,” they 
cried to one another so merrily that the spiders, 
who are not companionable creatures, felt them¬ 
selves compelled to come to the doors of their 
dens and chuckle, too. A sign-post! Lampblack, 
stretched out in an ecstasy upon the board, roused 
himself shivering from his dreams, and gazed 
at his own metamorphosis. He had been made 
into seven letters, thus: 

BANDITA. 


58 


LAMPBLACK 


This word in the Italian country, where the 
English painter’s studio was, means. Do not 
trespass, do not shoot, do not show yourself 
here: anything, indeed, that is peremptory and 
uncivil to all trespassers. In these seven 
letters, outspread upon the hoard, was Lamp¬ 
black crucified I 

Farewell, ambitious hopes and happy dreams! 
He had been employed to paint a sign-board, a 
thing stoned by the boys, blown on by the winds, 
gnawed by the rats, and drenched with the 
winter’s rains. Better the dust and the cobwebs 
of his old corner than such a shame as this I 

But help was there none. His fate was fixed. 
He was dried with a drench of turpentine, hastily 
clothed in a coat of copal, and, ere he yet was 
fully aware of all his misery, was being borne 
away upon the great board out of doors and 
handed to the gardener. For the master was a 
hasty and ardent man, and had been stung into 
impatience by the slaughter of some favorite blue 
thrushes in his ilex-trees that day, and so in his 
haste had chosen to do journeyman’s work him¬ 
self. Lampblack was carried out of the studio 
for the last time, and as the door closed on hi m 
he heard all the colors laughing, and the laugh of 
little Eose Madder was highest of all as she cried 


LAMPBLACK 


59 


to Naples Yellow, who was a dandy and made 
court to her, ^‘Poor old ugly Deposit! He will 
grumble to the owls and the bats now!’^ 

The door shut, shutting him out forever from 
all that joj^ous company and palace of fair 
visions, and the rough hands of the gardener 
grasped him and carried him to the edge of the 
great garden, where the wall overlooked the pub¬ 
lic road, and there fastened him up on high with 
a band of iron round the trunk of a tree. 

That night it rained heavily, and the north 
wind blew, and there was thunder also. Lamp¬ 
black, out in the storm without his tin house to 
shelter him, felt that of all creatures wretched on 
the face of the earth there was not one so miser¬ 
able as he. 

A sign-board! Nothing but a sign-board! 

The degradation of a color, created for art 
and artists, could not be deeper or more grievous 
anywhere. Oh, how he sighed for his tin tube 
and the quiet nook with the charcoal and the 
palette-knife! 

He had been unhappy there indeed, but still 
had had always some sort of hope to solace him,— 
some chance still remaining that one day fortune 
might smile and he be allowed to be at least the 
lowest stratiun of some immortal work. 


60 


LAMPBLACK 


But now hope was there none. His doom, 
his end, were fixed and changeless. Nevermore 
could he be anything but what he was; and change 
there could be none till weather and time should 
have done their work on him, and he be rotting 
on the wet earth, a shattered and worm-eaten 
wreck. 

Day broke,—a gloomy, misty morning. 

From where he was crucified upon the tree- 
^trunk he could no longer even see his beloved 
home, the studio: he could only see a dusky, in¬ 
tricate tangle of branches all about him, and be¬ 
low the wall of flint, with the Banksia that grew 
on it, and the hard, muddy highway, drenched 
from the storm of the night. 

A man passed in a miller’s cart, and stood up 
and swore at him, because the people had liked 
to come and shoot and trap the birds of the 
master’s wooded gardens, and knew that they 
must not do it now. 

A slug crawled over him, and a snail also. A 
woodpecker hammered at him with its strong 
beak. A boy went by under the wall and threw 
stones at him, and called him names. The rain 
poured down again heavily. He thought of the 
happy painting-room, where it had seemed 
always summer and always sunshine, and where 


LAMPBLACK 


61 


now in the forenoon all the colors were marshal¬ 
ling in the pageantry of the Arts, as he had seen 
them do hundreds of times from his lone corner. 
All the misery of the past looked happiness now. 

“If I were only dead, like Flakewhite,'' he 
thought; but the stones only bruised, they did not 
kill him: and the iron band only hurt, it did not 
stifle him. For whatever suffers very much, has 
always so much strength to continue to exist. 
And almost his loyal heart blasphemed and 
cursed the master who had brought him to such 
a fate as this. 

The day grew apace, and noon went by, and 
with it the rain passed. The sun shone out once 
more, and Lampblack, even imprisoned and 
wretched as he was, could not but see how beau¬ 
tiful the wet leaves looked, and the gossamers 
all hung with rain-drops, and the blue sky that 
shone through the boughs; for he had not lived 
with a great artist all his days to be blind, even 
in pain, to the loveliness of nature. The sun 
came out, and with it some little brown birds 
tripped out too,—^very simple and plain in their 
costiunes and ways, but which Lampblack knew 
were the loves of the poets, for he had heard the 
master call them so many times in summer nights. 
The little brown birds came tripping and peck- 


62 


LAMPBLACK 


ing about on the grass underneath his tree-trunk, 
and then flew on the top of the wall, which was 
covered with Banksia and many other creepers. 
The brown birds sang a little song, for though 
they sing most in the moonlight they do sing by 
day, too, and sometimes all day long. And what 
they sung was this: 

Oh, how happy we are, how happy! No nets 
dare now be spread for us, no cruel boys dare 
climb, and no cruel shooters fire. We are safe, 
quite safe, and the sweet summer has begun 
Lampblack listened, and even in his misery 
was touched and soothed by the tender liquid 
sounds that these little throats poured out among 
the light-yellow bloom of the Banksia flowers. 
And when one of the brown birds came and sat 
on a branch by him, swaying itself and drinking 
the rain-drops off a leaf, he ventured to ask, as 
well as he could for the iron that strangled him, 
why they were so safe, and what made them so 
happy. 

The bird look at him in surprise. 

‘‘Do you not know?’’ he said. “It is 
“I!” echoed Lampblack, and could say no 
more, for he feared that the bird was mocking 
him, a poor, silly, rusty black paint, only spread 
out to rot in fair weather and foul. What good 
could he do to any creature % 



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LAMPBLACK 


63 


‘‘You,” repeated the nightingale. “Did you 
not see that man under the wall? He had a 
gun; we should have been dead but for you. We 
will come and sing to you all night long, since 
you like it; and when we go to bed at dawn, I 
will tell my cousins the thrushes and merles to 
take our places, so that you shall hear somebody 
singing near you all the day long.’’ 

Lampblack was silent. 

His heart was too full to speak. 

Was it possible that he was of use, after all? 

“Can it be true?” he said, timidly. 

“Quite true,” said the nightingale. 

‘ ‘ Then the master knew best, ’ ’ thought Lamp¬ 
black. 

Never would he adorn a palace or be adored 
upon an altar. His high hopes were all dead, 
like last year’s leaves. The colors in the studio 
had all the glories of the world, but he was of 
use in it, after all; he could save these little lives. 
He was poor and despised, bruised by stones and 
drenched by storms; yet was he content, nailed 
there upon his tree, for he had not been made 
quite in vain. 

The sunset poured its red and golden splen¬ 
dors through the darkness of the boughs, and 
the birds sang all together, shouting for joy and 
praising God. 




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THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TEEE 


S HE was a Quatre Saison Rose-tree. 

She lived in a beautiful old garden with 
some charming magnolias for neighbors: 
they rather overshadowed her, certainly, because 
they were so very great and grand; but then such 
shadow as that is preferable, as every one knows, 
to a mere vulgar enjoyment of common daylight, 
and then the beetles went most to the magnolia- 
blossoms, for being so great and grand of course 
they got very much preyed upon, and this was 
a vast gain for the rose that was near them. She 
herself leaned against the wall of an orange- 
house, in company with a Banksia, a buoyant, 
active, simple-minded thing, for whom Rosa 
Damascena^ who thought herself much better 
born than these climbers, had a na|tural con¬ 
tempt. Banksise will flourish and be content any¬ 
where, they are such easily-pleased creatures; 
and when you cut them they thrive on it, which 
shows a very plebeian and pachydermatous tem¬ 
per; and they laugh all over in the face of an 
April day, shaking their little golden clusters 
of blossom in such a merry way that the Rose- 
tree, who was herself very reserved and thorny, 

67 


68 THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 

had really scruples about speaking to them. 

For she was by nature extremely proud— 
much prouder than her lineage warranted-—and 
a hard fate had fixed her to the wall of an 
orangery, where hardly anybody ever came, ex¬ 
cept the gardener and his men to carry the 
oranges in in winter and out in spring, or water 
and tend them while they were housed there. 

She was a handsome rose, and she knew it. 
But the garden was so crowded—like the world 
—^that she could not get herself noticed in it. In 
vain was she radiant and red close on to Christ¬ 
mas-time as in the fullest heats of midsummer. 
Nobody thought about her or praised her. She 
pined and was very unhappy. 

The Banksiae, who are little, frank, honest- 
hearted creatures, and say out what they think, 
as such plebeian people will, used to tell her 
roundly she was thankless for the supreme ex¬ 
cellence of her lot. 

‘^You have everything the soul of a rose can 
wish for: a splendid old wall with no nasty chinks 
in it; a careful gardener, who nips all the larvae 
in the bud before they can do you any damage; 
sun, water, care; above all, nobody ever cuts a 
single blossom off you! What more can you wish 
for? This orangery is paradise!” 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


69 


She did not answer. 

What wounded her pride so deeply was just 
this fact, that they never did cut off any of her 
blossoms. When day after day, year after year, 
she crowned herself with her rich crimson glory 
and no one ever came nigh to behold or to gather 
it, she could have died with vexation and 
humiliation. 

Would nobody see she was worth anything? 

The truth was that in this garden there was 
such an abundance of very rare roses that a 
common though beautiful one like Rosa pamas- 
cena remained unthought of; she was lovely, but 
then there were so many lovelier still, or, at least, 
much more d la mode. 

In the secluded garden-corner she suffered 
all the agonies of a pretty woman in the great 
world, who is only a pretty woman, and 
no more. It needs so very much more to he 
somebody. To be somebody was what Rosa 
Pamascena sighed for, from rosy dawn to rosier 
sunset. 

From her wall she could see across the green 
lawns, the great parterre which spread before 
the house terrace, and all the great roses that 
bloomed there—Her Majesty Gloire de Dijon, 
who was a reigning sovereign born, the royally- 


70 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


born Nipbetos, the Princesse Adelaide, the Com- 
tesse Ouvaroff, the Vicomtesse de Gazes all in 
gold, Madame de tSombreuil in snowy white, the 
beautiful Louise de Savoie, the exquisite Duchess 
of Devoniensis—all the roses that were great 
ladies in their own right, and as far off from her 
as were the stars that hung in heaven. Rosa 
Damascena would have given all her brilliant 
carnation hues to be pale and yellow like the 
Princesse Adelaide, or delicately colorless like 
Her Grace of Devoniensis. 

She tried all she could to lose her own warm 
blushes, and prayed that bees might sting her 
and so change her hues; but the bees were of low 
taste, and kept their pearl-powder and rouge and 
other pigments for the use of common flowers, 
like the evening primrose or the buttercup and 
borage, and never came near to do her any good 
in arts of toilet. 

One day the gardener approached and stood 
and looked at her: then all at once she felt a sharp 
stab in her from his knife, and a vivid pain ran 
downward through her stem. 

She did not know it, but gardeners and gods 
‘‘this way grant prayer.’’ 

“Has not something happened to me?” she 
asked of the little Banksise; for she felt very odd 



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THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 71 


all over her; and when you are unwell you can¬ 
not be very haughty. 

The saucy Banksias laughed, running over 
their wires that they cling to like little children. 

‘‘You have got your wish,’’ they said. “You 
are going to be a great lady; they have made you 
into a Rosa Indica!” 

A tea-rose! Was it possible? 

Was she going to belong at last to that grand 
and graceful order, which she had envied so long 
and vainly from afar ? 

Was she, indeed, no more mere simple Rosa 
Damascena ? She felt so happy she could hardly 
breathe. She thought it was her happiness that 
stifled her; in real matter of fact it was the tight 
bands in which the gardener had bound her. 

“Oh, what joy!” she thought, though she still 
felt very uncomfortable, but not for the world 
would she ever have admitted it to the Banksiae. 

The gardener had tied a tin tube on to her, 
and it was heavy and cumbersome; but no doubt, 
she said, to herself, the thing was fashionable, so 
she bore the burden of it very cheerfully. 

The Banksiae asked her how she felt; but she 
would not deign even to reply; and when a 
friendly blackbird, who had often picked grubs 
off her leaves, came and sang to her, she kept 


72 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


silent: a Rosa Indica was far above a blackbird. 

^‘Next time you want a caterpillar taken 
away, be may eat you for meV^ said the black¬ 
bird, and flew off in a buff. 

Sbe was very ungrateful to bate tbe black¬ 
bird so, for be bad been most useful to ber in 
doing to death all tbe larvae of worms and beetles 
and caterpillars and other destroyers which were 
laid treacherously within her leaves. Tbe good 
blackbird, with many another feathered friend, 
was forever at work in some good deed of tbe 
kind, and all tbe good, grateful flowers loved 
him and bis race. But to this terribly proud and 
discontented Rosa Damascena he bad been a bore, 
a common creature, a nuisance, a monster—any 
one of these things by turns, and sometimes all 
of them altogether. She used to long for tbe cat 
to get him. 

‘‘You ought to be such a happy rose!” the 
merle had said to her, one day. “There is no 
rose so strong and healthy as you are, except the 
briers.” 

And from that day she had hated him. The 
idea of naming those hedgerow brier roses in the 
same breath with her! 

You would have seen in that moment of her 
rage a very funny sight had you been there; 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 73 

nothing less funny than a rose-tree trying to box 
a blackbird’s ears I 

But, to be sure, you would only have thought 
the wind was blowing about the rose, so you 
would have seen nothing really of the drollery 
of it all, which was not droll at all to Rosa Damas- 
cena, for a wound in one’s vanity is as long heal¬ 
ing as a wound from a conical bullet in one’s 
body. The blackbird had not gone near her after 
that, nor any of his relations and friends, and 
she had had a great many shooting and flying 
pains for months together, in consequence of 
aphides’ eggs having been laid inside her stem— 
eggs of which the birds would have eased her 
long before if they had not been driven away by 
her haughty rage. 

However, she had been almost glad to have 
some ailment. She had called it aneurism, and 
believed it made her look refined and interesting. 
If it would only have made her pale 1 But it had 
not done that: she had remained of the richest 
rose color. 

When the winter had passed and the summer 
had come round again, the grafting had done its 
work: she was really a Rosa Indica, and timidly 
put forth the first blossom in her new estate. It 
was a small, rather puny yellowish thing, not to 


74 THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


be compared to her own natural red clusters, but 
she thought it far finer. 

Scarcely had it been put forth by her than 
the gardener whipped it off with his knife, and 
bore it away in proof of his success in such trans¬ 
mogrifications. 

She had never felt the knife before, when she 
had been only Rosa Damascena: it hurt her very 
much, and her heart bled. 

^‘11 faut souffrir pour etre belle, said the 
Banksiae in a good-natured effort at consolation. 
She was not going to answer them, and she made 
believe that her tears were only dew, though it 
was high noon and all the dew-drops had been 
drunk by the sun, who by noon-time gets tired of 
climbing and grows thirsty. 

Her next essay was much finer, and the knife 
whipped that off also. That summer she bore 
more and more blossoms, and always the knife 
cut them away, for she had been made one of the 
great race of Rosa Indica. 

Now, a rose-tree, when a blossom is chopped 
or broken off, suffers precisely as we human mor¬ 
tals do if we lose a finger; but the rose-tree, being 
a much more perfect and delicate handiwork of 
nature than any human being, has a faculty we 
have not: it lives and has a sentient soul in every 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 75 


one of its roses, and whatever one of these en¬ 
dures the tree entire endures also by sympathy. 
You think this very wonderful? Not at all. It 
is no whit more wonderful than that a lizard’s 
tail chopped oft runs about by itself, or that a dog 
can scent a foe or a thief whilst the foe or the 
thief is yet miles away. All these things are 
most wonderful, or not at all so—^just as you like. 

In a little while she bore another child: this 
time it was a fine fair creature, quite perfect in 
its hues and shapes. ^^I never saw a prettier!” 
said an emperor butterfly, pausing near for a 
moment; at that moment the knife of the gar¬ 
dener severed the rosebud’s stalk. 

‘‘The lady wants one for her bouquet de cor¬ 
sage: she goes to the opera to-night,” the man 
said to another man, as he took the young tea- 
rose. 

“What is the opera?” asked the mother-rose 
wearily of the butterfly. He did not know; but 
his cousin the death’s-head moth, asleep under a 
magnolia-leaf, looked down with a grim smile on 
his quaint face. 

“It is where everything dies in ten seconds,” 
he answered. “ It is a circle of fire; many friends 
of mine have flown in, none ever returned: your 
daughter will shrivel up and perish miserably. 
One pays for glory.” 


76 THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


The rose-tree shivered through all her stalks; 
but she was still proud, and tried to think that 
all this was said only out of envy. What should 
an old death’s-head moth know, whose eyes were 
so weak that a farthing rushlight blinded them ? 

So she lifted herself a little higher, and would 
not even see that the Banksise were nodding to 
her; and as for her old friend the blackbird, how 
vulgar he looked, bobbing up and down hunting 
worms and woodlice! could anything be more 
outrageously vulgar than that staring yellow 
beak of his? She twisted herself round not to 
see him, and felt quite annoyed that he went on 
and sang just the same, unconscious of, or in¬ 
different to, her coldness. 

With each successive summer Rosa Damas- 
cena became more integrally and absolutely a 
Rosa Indica, and suffered in proportion to her 
fashion and fame. 

True, people came continually to look at her, 
and especially in May-time would cry aloud. 
What a beautiful Mphetos!” But then she was 
bereaved of all her offspring, for, being of the 
race of Niphetos, they were precious, and one 
would go to die in an hour in a hot ball-room, 
and another to perish in a Sevres vase, where the 
china indeed was exquisite but the water was 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


77 


foul, and others went to be suffocated in the 
vicious gases of what the mortals call an opera- 
box, and others were pressed to death behind 
hard diamonds in a woman’s bosom; in one way 
or another they each and all perish miserably. 
She herself also lost many of her once luxuriant 
leaves, and had a little scanty foliage, red-brown 
in summer, instead of the thick, dark-green cloth¬ 
ing that she had worn when a rustic maiden. Not 
a day passed but the knife stabbed her; when the 
knife had nothing to take she was barren and 
chilly, for she had lost the happy power of look¬ 
ing beautiful all the year round, which once she 
had possessed. 

One day came when she was taken up out of 
the ground and borne into a glass house, placed 
in a large pot, and lifted up on to a pedestal, and 
left in a delicious atmosphere, with patrician 
plants all around her with long Latin names, and 
strange, rare beauties of their own. She bore 
bud after bud in this crystal temple, and became 
a very crown of blossom; and her spirit grew so 
elated, and her vanity so supreme, that she ceased 
to remember she had ever been a simple Rosa 
Damascena, except that she was always saying 
to herself, ^^How great I am! how great I am!” 
which she might have noticed that those born 


78 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


ladies, the Devoniensis and the Louise de Savoie, 
never did. But she noticed nothing except her 
own beauty, which she could see in a mirror that 
was let into the opposite wall of the greenhouse. 
Her blossoms were many and all quite perfect, 
and no knife touched them; and though to be sure 
she was still very scantily clothed so far as foliage 
went, yet she was all the more fashionable for 
that, so what did it matter ? 

One day, when her beauty was at its fullest 
perfection, she heard all the flowers about her 
bending and whispering with rustling and mur¬ 
muring, saying, ‘‘Who will be chosen? who will 
be chosen?’’ 

Chosen for what? 

They did not talk much to her, because she 
was but a new-comer and a parvenu, but she 
gathered from them in a little time that there was 
to be a ball for a marriage festivity at the house 
to which the greenhouse was attached. Each 
flower wondered if it would be chosen to go to it. 
The azaleas knew they would go, because they 
were in their pink or rose ball-dresses all ready; 
but no one else was sure. The rose-tree grew 
quite sick and faint with hope and fear. Unless 
she went, she felt that life was not worth the 
living. She had no idea what a ball might be, 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


79 


but she knew that it was another form of great¬ 
ness, when she was all ready, too, and so beautiful! 

The gardener came and sauntered down the 
glass house, glancing from one to another. The 
hearts of all beat high. The azaleas only never 
changed color: they were quite sure of them¬ 
selves. Who could do without them in February ? 

‘ ^ Oh, take me! take me! take me! ^ ’ prayed the 
rose-tree, in her foolish, longing, arrogant heart. 

Her wish was given her. The lord of their 
fates smiled when he came to where she stood. 

^‘This shall be for the place of honor,’’ he 
murmured, and he lifted her out of the large 
vase she lived in on to a trestle and summoned 
his boys to bear her away. The very azaleas 
themselves grew pale with envy. 

As for the rose-tree herself, she would not 
look at any one; she was carried through the old 
garden straight past the Banksias, but she would 
make them no sign; and as for the blackbird, she 
hoped a cat had eaten him! Had he not known 
her as Rosa Damascena ? 

She was borne bodily, roots and all, carefully 
wrapped up in soft matting, and taken into the 
great house. 

It was a very great house, a very grand house, 
and there was to be a marvellous feast in it, and 


80 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


a prince and princess from over the seas were 
that night to honor the mistress of it by their 
presence. All this Rosa Indica had gathered 
from the chatter of the flowers, and when she 
came into the big palace she saw many signs of 
excitement and confusion: servants out of livery 
were running up against one another in their 
hurry-scurry; miles and miles, it seemed, of crim¬ 
son carpeting were being unrolled all along the 
terrace and down the terrace steps, since by some 
peculiar but general impression royal personages 
are supposed not to like to walk upon anything 
else, though myself I think they must get quite 
sick of red carpet, seeing so very much of it 
spread for them wherever they go. To Rosa 
Indica, however, the bright scarlet carpeting 
looked very handsome, and seemed, indeed, a 
foretaste of heaven. 

Soon she was carried quite inside the house, 
into an immense room with a beautiful dome¬ 
shaped ceiling, painted in fresco three centuries 
before, and fresh as though it had been painted 
yesterday. At the end of the room was a great 
chair, gilded and painted, too, three centuries 
before, and covered with velvet, gold-fringed and 
powdered with golden grasshoppers. ‘‘That 
common insect here thought Rosa, in surprise. 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


81 


for she did not know that the chief of the house, 
long, long, long ago, when sleeping in the heat 
of noon in Palestine in the first crusade, had been 
awakened by a grasshopper lighting on his eye¬ 
lids, and so had been aroused in time to put on 
his armor and do battle with a troop of attacking 
Saracen cavalry, and beat them; wherefore, in 
gratitude, he had taken the humble field-creature 
as his badge for evermore. 

They set the roots of Rosa Indica now into a 
vase—such a vase! the royal blue of Sevres, if 
you please, and with border and scroll work and 
all kinds of wonders and glories painted on it 
and gilded on it, and standing four feet high if it 
stood one inch! I could never tell you the feel¬ 
ings of Rosa if I wrote a thousand pages. Her 
heart thrilled so with ecstasy that she almost 
dropped all her petals, only her vanity came to 
her aid, and helped her to control in a measure 
her emotions. The gardeners broke off a good 
deal of mould about her roots, and they muttered 
one to another something about her dying of it. 
But Rosa thought no more of that than a pretty 
lady does when her physician tells her she will 
die of tight lacing; not she! She was going to be 
put into that Sevres vase. 

This was enough for her, as it is enough for 
6 


82 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


the lady that she is going to be put into a hundred- 
guinea ball-gown. 

In she went. It was certainly a tight fit, as 
the gown often is, and Rosa felt nipped, strained, 
bruised, suffocated. But an old proverb has 
settled long ago that pride feels no pain, and per¬ 
haps the more foolish the pride the less is the 
pain that is felt—for the moment. 

They set her well into the vase, putting green 
moss over her roots, and then they stretched her 
branches out over a gilded trellis-work at the back 
of the vase. And very beautiful she looked; and 
she was at the head of the room, and a huge 
mirror down at the farther end opposite to her 
showed her own reflection. She was in paradise! 

‘ ‘ At last, ’ ’ she thought to herself, ‘ ‘ at last they 
have done me justice 

The azaleas were all crowded round under¬ 
neath her, like so many kneeling courtiers, but 
they were not taken out of their pots; they were 
only shrouded in moss. They had no Sevres 
vases. And they had always thought so much of 
themselves and given themselves such airs, for 
there is nothing so vain as an azalea—except, 
indeed, a camellia, which is the most conceited 
flower in the world, though, to do it justice, it is 
also the most industrious, for it is busy getting 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


83 


ready its next winter buds whilst the summer is 
still hot and broad on the land, which is very 
wise and prudent in it and much to be commended. 

Well, there was Rosa Indica at the head of 
the room in the Sevres vase, and very proud and 
triumphant she felt throned there, and the 
azaleas, of course, were whispering enviously 
underneath her, ^^Well, after all, she was only 
Rosa Damascena not so very long ago.’^ 

Yes, they knew! What a pity it was! They 
knew she had once been Rosa Damascena and 
never would wash it out of their minds—^the tire¬ 
some, spiteful, malignant creatures! 

Even aloft in the vase, in all her glory, the 
rose could have shed tears of mortification, and 
was ready to cry, like Themistocles, ^ ^ Can nobody 
give us oblivion?’^ 

Nobody could give that, for the azaleas, who 
were so irritated at being below her, were not at 
all likely to hold their tongues. But she had great 
consolations and triumphs, and began to believe 
that, let them say what they chose, she had never 
been a common garden-wall rose. The ladies of 
the house came in and praised her to the skies; 
the children ran up to her and clapped their 
hands and shouted for joy at her beauty; a won¬ 
derful big green bird came in and hopped before 


84 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


her, cocked his head on one side, and said to her, 
‘‘Pretty PoU! oh, such a pretty Poll!’’ 

‘ ‘ Even the birds adore me here! ’ ’ she thought, 
not dreaming he was only talking of himself; 
for when you are as vain as was this poor dear 
Rosa, creation is pervaded with your own per¬ 
fections, and even when other people say only 
“Poll!” you feel sure they are saying “You!” 
or they ought to be if they are not. 

So there she stood in her grand Sevres pot, 
and she was ready to cry with the poet, “The 
world may end to-night!” Alas! it was not the 
world which was to end. Let me hasten to close 
this true heart-rending history. 

There was a great dinner as the sun began 
to set, and the mistress of the house came in on 
the arm of the great foreign prince; and what 
did the foreign prince do but look up at Rosa, 
straight up at her, and over the heads of the 
azaleas, and say to his hostess, “What a beau¬ 
tiful rose you have there! A Niphetos, is it 
not?” 

And her mistress, who had known her long as 
simple Rosa Damascena, answered, “Yes, sir; it 
is a Niphetos.” 

Oh to have lived for that hour! The silly 
thing thought it worth all her suffering from the 



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THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


85 


gardener’s knife, all the loss of her robust health 
and delightful power of flowering in all four 
seasons. She was a Niphetos, really and truly a 
Niphetos! and not one syllable hinted as to her 
origin! She began to believe she had been iorn 
a tea-rose! 

The dinner was long and gorgeous; the guests 
were dazzling in jewels and in decorations; the 
table was loaded with old plate and rare china; 
the prince made a speech and used her as a simile 
of love and joy and purity and peace. The rose 
felt giddy with triumph and with the fumes of 
the wines around her. Her vase was of purple 
and gold, and all the voices round her said, “Oh, 
the beautiful rose!” [N'o one noticed the azaleas. 
How she wished that the blackbird could see for 
a minute, if the cat would gobble him up the 
next! 

The day sped on; the chatelaine and her 
guests went away; the table was rearranged; the 
rose-tree was left in its place of honor; the lights 
were lit; there was the sound of music near at 
hand; they were dancing in other chambers. 

Above her hung a chandelier—a circle of in¬ 
numerable little flames and drops that looked 
like dew or diamonds. She thought it was the 
sun come very close. After it had been there a 


86 THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 

little while it grew very hot, and its rays hurt 
her. 

‘ ‘ Can you not go a little farther away, O 
Sun?’’ she said to it. It was flattered at being 
taken for the sun, but answered her, am flxed 
in my place. Do you not understand astronomy ? ’ ’ 

She did not know what astronomy was, so 
was silent, and the heat hurt her. Still, she was 
in the place of honor: so she was happy. 

People came and went; but nobody noticed 
her. They ate and drank, they laughed and made 
love, and then went away to dance again, and 
the music went on all night long, and all night 
long the heat of the chandelier poured down on 
her. 

‘‘I am in the place of honor,” she said to her¬ 
self a thousand times in each hour. 

But the heat scorched her, and the fumes of 
the wines made her faint. She thought of the 
sweet fresh air of the old garden where the 
Banksise were. The garden was quite near, but 
the windows were closed, and there were the walls 
now between her and it. She was in the place 
of honor. But she grew sick and waxed faint 
as the burning rays of the artiflcial light shining 
above her seemed to pierce through and through 
her like lances of steel. The night seemed very 
long. She was tired. 


THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 87 


She was erect there on her Sevres throne, 
with the light thrilling and throbbing upon her 
in every point. Bnt she thought of the sweet, 
dark, fresh nights in the old home where the 
blackbird had slept, and she longed for them. 

The dancers came and went, the music 
thrummed and screamed, the laughter was both 
near and far; the rose-tree was amidst it all. 
Yet she felt alone—all alone! as travellers may 
feel in a desert. Hour succeeded hour; the night 
wore on apace; the dancers ceased to come; the 
music ceased, too; the light still burned down 
upon her, and the scorching fever of it consumed 
her like fire. 

Then there came silence—entire silence. 
Servants came round and put out all the lights— 
hundreds and hundreds of lights—quickly one by 
one. Other servants went to the windows and 
threw them wide open to let out the fumes of 
wine. Without, the night was changing into the 
gray that tells of earliest dawn. But it was a 
bitter frost; the grass was white with it; the air 
was ice. In the great darkness that had now 
fallen on all the scene this deadly cold came 
around the rose-tree and wrapped her in it as 
in a shroud. 

She shivered from head to foot. 


88 THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE 


The true glacial coldness crept into the hot 
banqueting-chamber, and moved round it in 
white, misty circles, like steam, like ghosts of the 
gay guests that had gone. All was dark and chill 
i—dark and chill as any grave I 

What worth was the place of honor now? 
Was this the place of honor? 

The rose-tree swooned and drooped! A ser¬ 
vant ^s rough hand shook down its worn beauty 
into a heap of fallen leaves. When they carried 
her out dead in the morning, the little Banksia- 
buds, safe hidden from the frost within their 
stems, waiting to come forth when the summer 
should come, murmured to one another: 

^‘She had her wish; she was great. This 
way the gods grant foolish prayers, and punish 
discontent!’’ 








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